by Ruby Scott
She mulled over the good qualities of Adrian almost defiantly as her mind continued to whisper to her, Edward is that as well.
Finally, one day when she had been there for an entire season, and spring had given way into summer and the flowers were in full bloom she decided that she would compare Adrian and Edward.
Her mother had always taught her to take two dresses side by side and look them over, see the flaws in each and take into account how much she would wear each one if she bought one or the other, and that usually decided for her what clothes she should buy. Mama was still helping her, though she didn’t know it.
She sat down at the desk that Edward had told her could be hers a few weeks ago when she had received her first letter from back home and wanted to write a reply and pulled out a blank sheet of parchment.
Feeling like a complete and utter fool, Rosaline wrote Edward’s name on one side, drew a line down the middle, and wrote Adrian’s name on the other.
She started with Adrian, trying to convince herself that he was the best match without even going over to Edward’s side, but it kept calling to her. The parallels that were presented in the two.
Edward was just as bright and caring as Adrian. He cared for his animals and her as if they were made of gold and she of diamond. His uncanny gaze made her instantly feel as if he could see inside of her, see her very thoughts before she spoke them. It could be disconcerting, but when those eyes were laughing and she was discussing his latest book with him, she felt as if he knew her in a way that no one else could.
An ink drop splatted onto Edward’s side as she held the pen above the paper, hovering. She didn’t move to wipe it away, didn’t even give it a second glance as she continued thinking. His physical attractiveness wasn’t the same instant blow to the soul as Adrian’s. Adrian was like the sun, bright and nearly blinding and very noticeable, even from across a room or a crowded street. Edward’s beauty was in the subtleness of it. He wasn’t overtly handsome, but his eyes made him stand out, and made one take in the rest of his face, the cheekbones that were indeed as high as Rosaline had imagined them to be that first night when he had come into her room and the straight nose that led down to the thin lips that weren’t too wide to be called ugly. His jaw was square and a little off center, making it so that one didn’t see the extent of the beauty at first, but the longer one stared at Edward Fitzgerald, the more beautiful he became.
Rosaline crushed the paper in her hand, not caring that the ink smeared it black. She had seen worse things on her hands in the few months she had spent at Edward’s ranch. Edward wouldn’t ask her what had happened, either. He constantly had dirt encrusted beneath his nails and ruggedly embedded in each and every available crevice.
It was just in time, too. The front door closed, and Rosaline stood. She was downstairs, and he would see her in a few moments, and she needed to look more composed than how she felt at the moment. He would see it in her face and ask her what was wrong, perhaps brush a finger across her jaw. That would be her undoing and she would probably fall to the floor and profess her love for him right then and there.
It would be exactly what he wanted, and she couldn’t let him do that. They were both stubborn; something else that drew them together and pushed them apart at the same time. They both knew how to dig their heels in and fight for what they wanted.
Stop it, Rosaline told herself. This is not the time. Her brain seemed to disagree, however, because a moment later when she saw Edward, her mouth opened of its own accord. “I—I…” she trailed off, turning away before he could see the blush that stained her cheeks, and perhaps her entire face and neck.
Edward looked over at her when she dared to glance back at him, raising one brow. “Such a lovely greeting from my lovely wife,” he said, coming forward and sweeping a low bow. “How does her majesty fair this fine evening?”
He is old enough to be your father, Rosaline told herself. Strangely, that didn’t affect her the way it had before when she had first discovered the horrifying fact that she might be in love with him. He is a rancher. And a smart, funny and lovely one at that. What about Adrian? Rosaline shook her head. No, she told herself. This will not happen. “You should not call me that,” Rosaline said after a few moments, and most definitely avoiding Edward’s question.
Edward scoffed, setting something on the table. It was large, covered with a cloth and completely undeterminable. “If that is what you wish, darling girl.”
“What is that?” Rosaline said, distracting herself from the endearment as fully as she possibly could.
Edward gave her his grin, the crooked one that made his face look all the more crooked for it. “Why I thought you would never ask, darling.” He made a show of taking the cover off with a swooping motion worthy of one of the moving pictures that had just begun to gain popularity back home.
A sewing machine gleamed up at her, well-used but well taken care of as well. She looked up at Edward in confusion. “A sewing machine?” She knew how to sew, but Mama had made her stop once they were a part of high society.
“We cannot afford to sew our own clothes,” she had said. “What will the people think? We would be the gossip of the entire town.”
“I cannot buy you new clothes as another man might, for I have not the funds,” Edward said, his gaze somewhat somber. “And I hope that this will take the edge off of the loathing you feel towards that statement. You will have fabrics and whatever threads you may need whenever the traders come through here to make your own clothes.”
Rosaline stood completely still for a few moments, feeling her heart expand to an impossible size at the unexpected gift. She had always loved sewing, and had secretly sewn whatever she could whenever she could use Sasha’s machine. She could never wear what she had sewn, for Mama would call her out on it, but she had always kept her skills sharp and honed just in case she would ever need it.
“Do you not like it? I can take it back,” Edward said after a few moments, glancing between her and the machine. “If you prefer something else for your birthday—
“It is perfect,” Rosaline burst out without even thinking about it. “This is the most perfect gift I have ever received—how do you know that it is my birthday?” she had forgotten the sentiment herself; losing track of time in the wilderness with nothing else to remind her.
Edward smiled. “I noticed the change of your age when we corresponded through letter at this time last year. You mentioned something of it.”
Suddenly it was too much, and Rosaline took a few steps back and away from this kindness, this perfection that Edward was offering her.
Her heart had made its choice, and she was scared. “I—I am sorry,” she said, feeling tears gather in her eyes. “I have to go upstairs.” She turned on her heel and hurried up the stairs as fast as she could, trying to run from her heart’s choice as well.
###
The knock came on her door precisely as it had the last time and the time before that, and every night before that. Edward came to her room each night, offering her the same thing that he had offered the first night: an offer to join him in his bed.
She closed her eyes, though they had been open from the moment she had laid down. The door opened a moment later, and Edward’s slow footsteps echoed surprisingly loudly in the quiet room, and she felt the bed dip beneath her. She could see the flickering shadows of the flame as it danced over the walls. This was a familiar thing that she could lose herself in, if only for a bit.
“Rose,” Edward said softly, touching her cheek. “I know that you are awake.”
Rosaline let out a breath and opened her eyes and looked down at Edward’s face, as beautiful as it had been the first night she had seen it in this particular light.
“Would you like to join me?” Edward asked, taking Rosaline’s hand in his own and stroking his thumb over the knuckles. Rosaline condoned this, if only to give her time to think. She closed her eyes once more, trying with every fiber of her being to not sa
y yes. She would say yes in a heartbeat if her heart had anything to say about it. But she remembered to keep her mind’s wit around her as well. It hurt her almost physically as she gave him the same answer she had for the past few months.
“No,” she said. “Not tonight.”
Edward stood and let go of her hand. His face didn’t change from that gentle look that it had, didn’t get angry. “Very well.”
As he walked towards the door, Rosaline felt physical pain. “Wait,” she called out as he put his hand on the knob.
“What is it?” Edward asked.
If she was never to see Adrian again, would she be happy with this man? She asked herself this in a final test before she spoke. The resounding yes made her sure. “Could you join me?”
The surprise was apparent in the way Edward tilted his shoulders back and glanced back at her. Then, he smiled, the surprised look shattering. “Of course,” he murmured, coming back over to her and placing a hand on her own, threading his fingers through hers and stroking a hand along her cheek.
Yes. She could get used to this. She would be happy here. Her heart condoned with ever fiber, and she smiled in spite of herself.
“Happy birthday, love,” Edward whispered to her.
THE END
© Copyright 2015 by April Jane - All rights reserved.
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Her Montana Outlaw
by April Jane
1874
“Can I get another drink over here?”
The voice was slurred, nearly past the point of recognition. Candice had heard that tone too many times to count, however, and had learned it almost as another language. She sighed and leaned her hip against the counter, swiping a hand quickly across the gathering sweat on her brow. She could feel the hairs that had come loose from her bun curling around her temples and sticking in the sweat, and she wanted nothing more than to go outside and feel the cool breeze that came with Montana summers most days caress her cheeks.
Instead, she swept herself under the counter and hunted for whatever the man had to drink last and began pouring it as quickly as she could.
Candice knew that she should find a better job. It was not as if she was proud to exclaim that she just happened to be the barmaid at the local tavern. Most girls would scoff and call her names better left unsaid behind carefully gloved hands. She knew that she was talented; she could count numbers and run a cash register and return change, as well as sweet-talk a customer into buying just one more drink. She had other uses for her life, but it was her obligation to remain the barmaid of the saloon.
She had tried. Applying to the mail order bride catalogue had been one of her many attempts to get free of this miserable town, but so far no one had sent her a letter, not even a telegram to let her know that she was wanted outside of being a barmaid.
Her father would not have it any other way. If she dared try to leave, she would find herself without a home, and a name to boot, which ruled out simply leaving. The only thing that protected her reputation at the moment was the fact that her father was the owner of the saloon. One misstep without his name hanging over her head, she would be ruined for life.
Not that it mattered all that much. Candice was used to being looked over, sneered at, and even verbally criticized at times for her… extra padding, as she liked to think of it and call it. There had not been the opportunity for a misstep, and Candice was beginning to believe that there would not be one.
“Her face is pretty,” she had heard someone say once; she hardly remembered who anymore. “But the rest…” there had been the sort of implication that left Candice to her own devices, and her mind could be cruel.
With a roll of the eyes, Candice rotated her hips around the edge of the counter and poured a mix of the man’s favorite poisons into his cup.
“Thank you, love,” the man said, eyes glimmering with certain drunkenness. Candice flattened her lips in a dead smile and spun away before he could say something that would make her want to punch him. As she spun, a hard, bony shoulder slammed into her gut, causing her to slosh liquid out of one of the glasses.
“Watch it,” she snapped without thinking as the man stood up. By the time she got to his face, he was already done with his critical, sneering glare down her body. She blinked a few times. She was used to the somewhat-good-looking men that travelled through the tavern, but he was a rare pick. Face like one that should have been painted and hung in some high-class art gallery back East and clothes to match the probable wealth he had, he was everything that Candice had secretly wanted and would never have. And he was sneering at her. Brilliant green eyes rendered her boneless as he made his way back up her body to her face. They were almost dead, and Candice shivered. Such beautiful eyes should never contain such… nothingness.
But it was not the beauty that made her pause. She had seen this man somewhere before. Where, though? Surely she would remember such a striking face if she saw it on the streets of their otherwise dull and uninteresting town.
Candice smiled sweetly at him and moved out of the way. He walked outside without a backward glance. She watched him go past the rest of the patrons for several moments in which she couldn’t remember how to move herself or tear her eyes away. His familiarity was like an itch that Candice couldn’t quite reach, and it niggled at her brain like some unsolvable riddle.
Finally, when another man bumped into her, apologizing profusely, she was shaken from the stupor the man had put her in with just a glance from his eyes.
Shaking her head to clear it, Candice moved behind the bar once more. She let out a sigh. Navigating the narrow, haphazard rows of the tavern was always one of her least favorite parts of working behind the bar. She did not mind being behind it nearly as much, but when she had to leave the comfort and safety of the barrier between her and the patrons it was an entirely different matter. If she had it her way, Candice would be behind the bar the entire time.
“A shot, miss?” Without even looking up, Candice nodded and flipped a glass over, pouring top-shelf whiskey into it and sliding it down the bar, stopping mere inches from the man’s fingertips. Five years had given her the ability to do that, and Father insisted that she show off whenever she could. It was good for business, after all.
As she picked up the cloth to begin cleaning glasses, Candice’s attention was drawn to the back wall. She had heard the sound of someone being thrown against the wall before; it was a common occurrence with drunks, and it was not uncommon that she was forced to remove them from the tavern and they would continue whatever disagreement they had begun outside. However, this was the middle of the day, and she had never heard this sound in broad daylight.
Candice set the glass she was polishing down carefully on the bar and held up a hand to hold off the next request for a drink and slid around the bar once more. The general noise of the tavern washed over Candice as she moved through the sea of the crowd. She ignored all of the voices, all of the conversations she would usually pay attention to, searching for hidden insults and slurs against her with the intensity of a bloodhound.
She slid between two men as she reached the doors, pushing out into the street. Candice squinted her eyes against the sudden light and gust of wind that carried the months-parched dust.
The street was empty, save a few parked carriages that were in various stages of decomposition. From one glance, Candice could tell who the visitors to their tiny, dusty town were, because their carriages were covered, with horses that didn’t look on the verge of dropping from exhaustion, from being used as both transportation and pulling the machinery that was the only thing that kept this town alive.
Aft
er the gold rush a few years ago, most of the people who had supported the town—the tavern and the rest of the stores—had left and moved on westward, to where the gold actually was. Unlike most of the towns that the people who so foolishly chased the golden nuggets, however, some people had chosen to stay in this town; Candice’s father one of them. After the death of her mother from travelling across the country, Candice’s father had thought it best to stay. Whether or not he feared for his own life or Candice’s, she would never know. He refused to talk about it.
He also would not approve of this. Candice turned to look over her shoulder in a sort of habit she knew that she would never shake. She could catch the glimpse of the stairs just before the door swung shut behind her. Candice nearly expected to see her father, lurking at the top, or observing the customers, eyes darting towards hers in the silent way that he managed to convey more disapproval than he could ever physically put into words, even though he would try, hours later. It would hang over Candice’s head for the rest of the day; she would silently hold her breath and wait for the other shoe to drop.
But he was not here today, was he? Candice’s father had been gone for the past four days on a supply run down in the southern part of their “state”, as the Government was now making them call what had previously been known as “territories” to them. He would be gone for maybe another entire day, but at least until later this evening. She did not have to worry about him disapproving of her going to see what was making such loud noises against the wall of the tavern. Not today.